Galleries

Spencer Merolla

My work is concerned with bereavement: the tension between public and private grief, social customs and material culture of mourning, and objects as repositories of memory which both retain and transmit meaning. Among the media I work with are human hair, clothing, and found photographs.

After a Fashion is a series of fabric pieces made from clothing worn to funerals. Inspired by a personal experience with a dress I wore to my mother’s funeral and could never bring myself to put on again, I asked family and friends whether they too had clothing too tainted by association to wear. Slowly I began collecting clothes–sometimes decades old–that had languished unworn in the backs of closets, too distressing to wear and too sentimental to just throw away. Handling these testaments of loss is a powerful ex­perience, as every garment comes with a story. Joining them together allows for the creation of a symbolic location in which otherwise private griefs become public and communal.